MARCH NEWSLETTER

Spring’s nearly upon us and we have some exciting things going on at Kraken!

Recent Events

First of all, I’d like to congratulate some of our students/fighters for their recent achievements. We had Roscoe Pibworth win his MMA bout on Saturday against a very high-level opponent. He dominated all three rounds to win an unanimous decision, taking him to 3-0!

Two weeks ago, we had Alex Velenciuc fight in another Professional K1 bout against another dangerous opponent, winning via knockout in the very first round!

On 26th February we had a few of our grapplers compete in the Allstars BJJ Nationals, with Zach Payne winning double gold, Antonio Bosco winning gold (gi) & silver (nogi), and coach Dan Lester winning silver in his division (gi).

The day before (25th) we took a load of guys down to Storm MMA in Luton for their interclub and did really well across board! Well done Daniel Siong, Rocco Dangelico, Liam Baxter, Antonio Bosco, Ivan Cavallaro, Dylan Anderson, Dominic Robertson, Andrei Butnaru, David Forsyth, Leon Likaj, James Willis and Tyler Belgrave!

On 21st January we had our last Junior MMA grading and a very successful one at that. Big congrats to everyone and a special shoutout to Rocco Dangelico for being Kraken’s first ever student to be promoted to black belt in our Junior MMA curriculum. Rocco was one of our first students through the door when we first opened and I personally was coaching Rocco for years at the previous gym so both Tim and I have had the pleasure of watching him grow into the young man that he’s become and develop a full suite of skills that he will now continue to hone within our adult classes.

Our first grappling tournament of the year was on 15th Jan. We took a massive squad of 17 (adults and juniors) down from Kraken to Allstars BJJ Winter Edition and manage to bag a total of 8x🥇 9x🥈 2x 🥉 and 1x belt! There’s too many to mention but Olly Slimane absolutely smashed his first ever tournament taking two golds and smashing through the absolute division (all stacked!) to win the belt and £100 cash prize. Lara Spajic won the final of her division in about 30 seconds with a fast guard pull and triangle – something we’ve spent a fair amount of time drilling lately. Haiying Lin picked up another gold in gi and silver in nogi (losing by an advantage to a girl who was the weight above and just squeezed the crap out of her in the same position for the entire fight). Ying still hasn’t conceded a single point in any competition from when she first started training at white belt through to present at blue! Ivan Cavallaro smashed through his division winning gold in his first ever comp! Finlay Gear, Andrei Butnaru, Alfie Greener, Eireann Mason and Antonio Bosco all of which were competed for the first time and showed amazing composure, taking three silvers and two bronze respectively. Other shout-outs go to Andy Clarke (gold), Oscar Stephenson (silver), James Murray (silver), coach Dan (silver), coach Rick (gold & silver), coach Darren (gold & silver), Rafael Spajic, Amir Lounez, Jack Benedickter and Mustafa Elsherkisi.

Last but not least I would like to give a special shout-out to one of our junior students, Josh. We heard reports and then saw a video of an incident that took place within the town center where he stopped a friend being beaten up by a couple of kids, who then started swinging for Josh. Josh managed to defend himself very well against both kids until the point that he was able to escape the situation. We’re very proud of his courage to deal with the situation so well.

Upcoming Events

We have a lot of events coming up, including MMA bouts, grappling tournaments, our April Shred, Junior MMA Grading, new Beginners MMA Course and many social events in the pipeline. All we be posted to our website and Telegram channel so watch this space!

Staff

First of all, I’d like to welcome Teresa to the team. Teresa will be joining us in a managerial role helping the general operations at Kraken with her many years of management experience. I feel like she doesn’t need too much of an introduction as she has been a part of the Kraken furniture since we first opened and is regularly down the gym smashing the Fighting Fit classes, supporting her grandson, telling Tim and I off or simply chilling in the cafe.

As most of you already know we have had another change to our coaching team with some additions in Aaron, Pete and Dan! I could spend ages talking about their accolades but check them out on our website! All I can say is that I’m so happy with how our coaching team is developing. Changes obviously suck for all of us but the important thing is that the coaching team grows with the gym. To continue to be successful in the professional MMA circuit, amateur MMA, professional K1 and grappling, this is non-negotiable. I can honestly say that our coaching team is one of, if not ‘the’, best feature of the gym! Enjoy the classes and rack the coaches brains!

Timetable

We’ve tweaked the timetable once again! A few classes have been tweaked:

• There’s an additional Fighting Fit class Monday daytime’s – we are now open from 9am – 10pm on Monday’s too! The new one starts on Monday (20th March)!
• One of the evening FF’s have been removed on Wednesday as it was dead. This allows the MMA class use of the full mat.
• We have also got rid of the 15min gap on Wednesday eve, meaning that the MMA class finishes at 21:30 instead of 21:45.
• There’s a new early morning FF at 07:30-08:15 on Thursdays for all of those early worms wanting to squeeze a session in before work!
• Perhaps the biggest change is to the weekends. We’ve moved the wrestling class to first thing Saturday morning and have brought Sunday’s FF forward to 11:00-12:00 which will hopefully be a better suited time for most of you.

Please double check all times on GymSync when booking in and continue to scan your membership fob upon arrival.

Misc.

Just a few things to mention on a side note:

• Food/Smoothies are now in the pipeline and in good hands considering that coach Pete was a professional chef for many years 😋
• Some exciting training equipment upgrades coming to the gym but I’m not going to say too much. Be patient and you’ll see!
• A few small building repairs/renovations on the way.
• Please make sure you keep booking in on GymSync and swiping in with your key-fob each and every time. We use this for multiple reasons including monitoring student’s training frequency for consideration with grading and putting forward for fights. Junior and Adult students that have been warned multiple times will not be able to train without doing so. If you have trouble remembering your fob then an idea is to take a decent quality picture of your QR code on your phone so that you can scan that.
• If you aren’t already, then please make sure that you are familiar with our Etiquette Policy. Parents, you too please.